


Toy Soldiers.

by Pups_Side_Box (Puppyinabox)



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: "Hey, Dib ks still a loser, Gaz is still kinda a jerk, Highschool AU, I got inspired by mopinness of doom, I like to write and thought, M/M, ZaDr, Zim is still kinda dumb, and im not sorry, kinda angsty, ok?, so i did, why not write zadr?"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:55:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8074087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puppyinabox/pseuds/Pups_Side_Box
Summary: Highschool au!Ya





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Highschool au, everything's the same. But older.

A lot had changed in five years. Maybe too much, too quickly, but everyone addapts to it. Everybodies supposed to grow up. Everything changes, except for some things burried deep in our souls. 

Dib still wanted to see the world, study the stars, and find something great. But his methods had changed since he was a child. He had a part-time job, and was taking classes on journalism and astrophysics. He was going to change the world, that much he knew in his heart, but he never knew how. He always wanted to help people, prove himself, and be the hero.

Zim hadn't changed as much as his human rival. Due to earth's weaker gravity, he managed to grow a bit. He was still below the average height of human males of his supposed age range, but he was tall for an irken. He bragged about it for months, until he realized no one really cared. He still believed in his mission, but had slowed down. Zim had realized that this ball of dirt, and the humans crawling on it, were doomed on their own. Those humans, pumping up their oil, and out their horrible poison gas. They'd been doomed from the start, when they found fosil fuel. Oh, how they loved their onyx gold.

 

Zim and Dib still competed now and then, but it was different from when they were younger. They competed for grades, social status, and strength. To anyone watching from the side, it would seem like just a small fued. But to them it was more. It was a battle between worlds. Between ideals. They opposed each other, both not willing to give up on the promise they'd made. One was to live, and one was to die. Or at least that's what they believed.  
Then, highskool reared it's hideous head.

"Zim, you won't make top of the class THIS year!" Dib sneered, catching up to the shorter green boy.

"I highly doubt you can defeat THE ZIM!" Zim shrieked back, "as if you could get ahigher grade then the AMAZING me in your pathetic space class."

"You mean the space unit in science?"

"Silence! Zim knows what he speaks of. And yes, the space unit."

Dib shrugged, "well, you may be right there. But I'll still beat you at earth sciences and history."

"Both of you idiots are going to fail English class." A voice from behind them hissed. The two turned around to see Dib's sister Gaz. She grinned and tucked a stray purple hair back in place.

Gaz had proven very well in school, when she put her mind to it she could really do anything at all. She had simply lacked motivation in her younger years. But soon after deciding to give a damn about school, she excelled. Skipping over a grade, and joining Dib in sophomore year. She always got good grades, but not the best. She would get into fights, which would mess with her record. Her quick temper would always be her greatest weakness, if not her only.

She chuckled a bit and continued, "I mean, I know for sure that you didn't do the assigned summer reading. And Mr. Grotshaw is really strict about assigned reading." She pointed to her brother when she made this statement, "and you," now facing Zim, "do you even have the slightest idea who Edgar Allan Poe was?"

"Ah, he was a play write, correct?" Zim guessed, a bit afraid of the threatening girl.

"Wrong."

A shrill buzzer came over the loud speaker, telling the highskool students that they had one minute to make an mad dash for their classes. Gaz waved them but and walked into a class near,while the two boys raced down the halls, weaving between panicked freshmen, and thretening seniors.  
Dib got to their math class first, Zim following by ten seconds.  
"Damnit." The alien said as he took his seat. The teacher glared at them, and continued with her lecture.

'At least it's not Bitters anymore.' Dib thought, shuddering at the memory of the woman.

 

 

Math class remained uneventful, and was the only class besides science that Zim and Dib shared. Other than a few insults tossed in the halls, they remained apart.  
Then the time arrived.  
The science teacher quickly sat the teens in pairs, saying they would be doing a very important lab that day.  
Gaz had been placed with Keef, much to her disliking, while Zita and The Letter M shared a table. Oldkid was out sick that day, so there was an even number of students. Finally, Dib was placed with Zim.

"Aw, c'mon Miss Trent, you know he and I don't get along." Dib complained as he took his seat,

"Dib, you were both top of the class last year, if i put you with anyone else you'd be bored." She replied, slightly annoyed.

"Whatever." Zim huffed, resting his chin in his palm. 

Apparently they were doing frog dissections that day. A few people gagged, while some laughed at them. Zim was prepared to readily take notes of the earth amphibian, which made Dib a small bit peeved. He had to make the first incision, Zim quickly scribbling away as his partner did the dirty work. The human had to ask the irken about five times to hand him the forceps before receiving them.  
Afterwards, Dib had to copy his sister's notes and wash frog blood from where the budget Skool gloves had leaked.

Then came lunch.  
Zim despised lunchtime at skool. It was when he had to avoid being burned or poisoned, try to find something that was edible for him, and avoid the teasing of older or cooler students. It all started around their eigth year. The other students had realised that Zim really was super weird. They made fun of his green skin, his lack of nose and ears, and his hair. But worst of all, then made fun of his height. At firsr it was a half-assed joke.  
"You're so short, greenbean." One of the skoolkids laughed. But Zim's reaction was what made it bigger. He yelled back, then the skoolkid's friends joined in on calling the alien short. And eventually Zim just let it hurt.  
Lunch was when Zim's fragile pride was tested.

Which was why Dib loved lunchtime.  
Ok, "loved" would be the wrong word.  
Lunchtime amused him. It was when Zim, rather than himself, was pestered by idiots. Dib was always bullied as a kid, hell he still was. But never at lunch.  
Probably because he always sat with Gaz, and everone was afraid of her. None the less, Dib felt safe at lunch. And watching his rival have to always be on his toes was like a cherry on top.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow now!  
> Chapter two, my dudes.

After school Dib and his sister walked back to their house, silently. Dib then decided to speak,

"Hey Gaz," he said,

"What?" she asked, trying not to growl. She really did try to be a bit of a better sister. But not much.

"What do you think zim has planned for tomorrow? Maybe some kinda death ray?" He guessed, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. 

"Seriously dude?" Gaz groaned, "are you really already worrying about tomorrow? I mean, how obsessed are you?"

"Well, not as much as Keef. Remember him? God he was creepy."

"He still goes to school with us, dumbass. Ugh, I had to deal with him today! He is pretty creepy, but i will admit, he sure can gut an a amphibeon." Gaz went on.

"How is that a good thing?" Her brother questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"How the hell should I know?"

 

They fell silent again. Dib's family had never been the warmest on the block, or the closest. It wasn't bad, it just was hectic. Their dad was always away, even though he tried to spend time with them. And Gaz was completely anti-social until she turned twelve, slowly letting people in. You would think Dib would be the normal one, but then there was his interest in the paranormal that had to be considered. So, the membrane family was seen by the local eye as a pretty strange cast of characters, while the public eye saw them as idols. Gaz, the game wizard. Hell bent on the phrase "just one more level.". Dib, the son and eldest child, fascinated with space and what may be out there. And of course, their father. The famouse Professor Membrane, world renowned.

Dib and Gaz had some pretty big shoes to fill. So of course everyone had expectations of them. Whenever one wasn't fulfilled, no matter how impossible, the media would run to their door.

"Like vultures." Gaz once said, as she watched reporters bang on their door to ask her about a meaningless argument she got into at school.

 

Zim opened the door to his base, robot parents using their pre-recorded greetings. He pushed past them and walked straight to his elevator, leading to the lab, and stepped inside. He could hear GIR shrieking a hello from across the room, but chose to ignore his robot minion.  
He had something to do.  
when he got to his laboratory he sat at his computer and quickly began to type away. He made sure to get the coordinates right, and the spelling.  
"Computer, contact my tallests."

"Ugh, why?"

"I must give them an update on my mission." Zim explained, frustrated by the computerized voice,

"Whatever." The computer sighed.

When the tallests answered, only red stood in front of the camera.  
"What is it zim?" He seemed more irritated than normal.

"I simply wished to give you an update on my AMAZING and secret mission, my tallest." The shorter irken continued, "and I am pleased to anounce that I have made a breakthrough!"  
Red rolled his eyes,

"And what would that be?"

"POISON MOOSEBEES!" Zim cried, grinning.  
Red growled.

"Look, zim, I don't have much patients today, so can we just not do this? I mean, really? Moose-bees?" Red pressed two thin fingers to a temple. "Geeze, purple could have handeled this better." He muttered to himself, agrivated.

"Ah yes, where is my other tallest?" Zim asked, now realizing the purple goof was nowhere to be seen.

"He's away. He'll be back, he always is. Anyway, call me back when your whole moose thing starts to work, okay" folowed by a quiet, "defect."  
Zim's antenae perked up,

"Pardon?"

"Oh crap. Bye." Red noticed what he said and quickly ended the call. He never did have a handle on his temper, or the things he said.

 

"Defect?"

Zim had heard what his tallest had said about him. He felt pained, he felt like he'd been a disappointment, but worst of all, he felt too small to defend himself. That was the most extreme emotion irkens were trained to feel, fear and danger. If that emotion was ever encountered, an irken warrior was meant to go to his fellow invaders and rally them together. In battle, they had a hive-mind, but Zim was all alone on this hurdeling ball of dirt. No other irkens to help him, as if they would, no proper robot companions, no one.  
But Dib was still there.

Whenever Zim had felt inferior, he just remembered that Dib saw him for the alien killing machine he was.

 

Dib actually saw him as more than a lowley defect. A mistake, or an error in the code.

He saw him as a strong warrior.  
Someone to be feared.  
To be stopped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posible editing later.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wowie!  
> Three!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woooshie woo!

Zim scrolled through the data displayed in his computer screen. Searching, scanning, watching for some kind of error. Something that made him weaker. He already had seen it, but he would always check. Maybe, just maybe. Maybe the defect would disapear if he won. If he succeded in his mission.  
He would check each week, sometimes more. It was a ritual to him now.

"Error code 3298." 

That's what was wrong. Zim had asked before, when he'd found it, what the error message meant. His tallests never told him. They just said it was probably an error in the lab computer.  
It wasn't.  
It was an error in the part of his PAK and his brain that was supposed to process messages sent over the hive-mind in battle. The part that was supposed to make him the perfect soldier, an unstoppable force of power that entire galaxies were to fear.  
And a little messed up line of code ruined it.

 

Dib drummed his fingers against the kitchen table, brain working the calculations for a bit of his math homework. The rest had been easy, but this one he kept messing up. Gaz refused to help him, mostly because she had no clue either. After about thirty minutes he gave up and wrote a random number.

"Its graded for completion anyway." He mumbled as he packed away the paper and pulled out a small note-pad, checking a notification in his phone. He saw a little green dot on screen and jotted down a number, a code, and a date.  
"87, 9/21/201x, 3287." He looked for a pattern in the dates. But there didn't seem to be any coronation between date and code. He shrugged and dismissed his uneasiness as paranoia. He placed the pad back and zipped his bag closed. He walked over to the couch and tapped on Gaz's shoulder,  
"I'm going to Zim's. Tell dad where I am if he gets back before I do."

"Kay." She responded, not looking away from the tv.

 

Dib dodged the attacks of Zim's lawn gnomes and reached the blibdspot at the front door, tapping his knuckles on the painted wood. He heard a crash and some screaming, before a small familiar robot opened the door.

"Heya Mary!" GIR shouted in his shrill high-pitched voice. "Haven't seen you in a while! Where you been?! Why're you here?"

Dib laughed a bit, GIR had never really ceased to amuse and amaze him. The tiny robot was insane, and probably didn't do it's job like he was supposed to, but he was fun and could really do damage if he felt like it. Strange indeed.

"just visiting Zim." Dib smiled. GIR nodded and ran back to his place on the couch. Dib looked around the home, not much had changed. Asside from the couch and the television, everything was the exact same as always. It felt comforting, in a way. He'd always knew his way around the place. He stepped into the kitchen, where the elevator to Zim's lab was. Dib thought about just barging in unannounced, but decided that would be stupid and possibly deadly. Instead he let GIR go tell the alien below that he had a visitor. As GIR ran for the elevator, Dib sat down on the couch situated under Zim's creepy painting of a green monkey, and watched the tv. It quickly lost his interest, it was just cartoons. And not even ones he liked, just a bunch of watered down characters yelling at each other and exploding. Most likely GIR's favorite show. Dib thought for a bit while he waited. Zim was taking a long time. Maybe he had something big planned!

The irken stepped out of the elevator, disguis only half on. One magenta eye wasn't covered by the usual blue-purple contact lens. Zim's disposition seemed sad, angered, and a bit tired. He glared at Dib and told him to leave. Dib shook his head and said he was staying. Zim sighed and walked back towards his elevator.

"hey, wait. You're not gonna kick me out pf something?" Dib asked, puzzeled.

"You're not going to do anything, are you?" Zim questioned back 

"Well no."

"Then why would I use the effort?" This was more of a statement than a question.

"because I'm your mortal enemy." 

Zim sighed again and turned back around.

"The mighty Zim is tired. Go home, Dib-worm."

"Psssh, you're never tired! You're just planning some big scheme to conquer the planet!"

"I'm really not." Zim squinted at the human to add force to his words before ordering the home computer to kick him out. Which it did. Dib just barely got past the gnomes afterwards, before trudging home.

"What was up with him? He seemed bummed out. Eh, probably nothing I should worry about."  
But part of him still did worry. And that part of him didn't have an easy time sleeping that night.

 

Dib lie awake, staring up at the stars his dad had painted on his cieling in glow-in-the-dark paint when he was five. His mind was spinning and going round and round over the day. It started out normal enough, well normal for him, but it ended strangely. Zim didn't want to fight, he didn't bear that signature cocky grin of his, he just frowned. He didn't even kick Dib out in an elaborate way, he just had the base's metal snake-like arms push him out. He behaved more like he didn't really care. 

That part confused Dib. It was an anomaly, an error in a calculation. Out of everything he knew about Zim, he didn't expect that. Zim always did everything in a complete, confident, and quick manner. This has been like a cat scratching someone to get them to go away.   
Maybe he was just pretending? Dib tried to reason why Zim would do that. Then he remembered.  
"Eighty seven, two thousand ex, three two nine eight." He whispered to himself.   
Zim had become obsessed with something other than Dib or his mission. And it seemed to be troubling him.  
Dib knew he should have been happy that Zim was reluctant to destroy earth.  
But he wasn't.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Same night, unless said otherwise.

Dib eventually gave up on trying to get sleep that night with his mind so troubled. He tossed his covers off of himself and crawled to the foot of his bed. Dib parted the blinds of his fishbowl lens of a window and stared up at the dim stars in the sky. The smaller stars had been drowned out by the city lights and that made him a bit sad. He missed the stars.  
He always loved them. Dib used to sneak out of the house late at night to try to see them all, thinking that if he got higher on the roof he would be able to touch them and see what was really out there.

Dib shut his eyes and tried to remember the last time he saw the most stars ever. It was when he and Gaz visited their grandparents at their cabin in the mountains. His grandfather had told him stories from the day people had first found the gas planets to the day man set foot on the moon. Dib would sit on the rug in the sitting room, Gaz fidgeting next to him, wide eyed at the tales of the stars. He remembered how the stars would twinkle and beckon, the way they gathered in the long stripe Dib's Grandfather told him was called "The Milky-Way", and the moon hung in the sky, shining brighter than the rest of the celestial bodies. He always wondered why no one had gone back to the moon when he was little, but now he could go whenever he wanted.  
That was a strange feeling. 

He had become so accustomed to the absurd in the universe. He owned an alien spaceship! He would have never thought he'd get so close to an alien in his lifetime, but now he could leave this solar system if he felt like it. It may have been everything he wanted, but life has twists. If he was honest with himself, it was nothing like what he'd imagined. He thought he'd be famous by now, having saved the world countless times. But he was still just the weird kid in the back of the classroom, or sitting with no one but his little sister ever at lunch because she protected him. It was a bit disappointing. And worse, the alien he met, who was trying to destroy his planet, wasn't that much of a threat, but Dib didn't know that. And he didn't want to.

The next day at skool, Dib trudged through the doors with his bag half packed and his hair haphazardly styled. Gaz walked next to him, occasionally waving at one of her few friends. Dib realized she had grown up more than he had, he still spent most of his time chasing Zim, while she had started making friends and actually studying. She wasn't the same brat as she had been, she was still kind of a jerk, though. Dib envied her social abilities. she had adapted to their changing lives, but he hadn't. Dib still didn't have any friends and didn't get along well with his teachers, he may have honestly gotten worse. even Zim had at least one friend, all Dib had was family. sometimes not even that.

Zim squinted as he stepped out of his house, the sun was far too bright for his eyes, even through his colored contacts. Gir shrieked a goodbye and slammed the door behind Zim, startling him. He frowned at went on his way down the sidewalk. Zim knew he'd be late to class, but he was too lazy to get the voot out or use his PAK. As he walked, he thought and thought and thought. Not much could hurt him usually, he was trained to have a thick skin, but he always doubted himself and what people thought of him. Zim always held his head high because he knew that no one else would, and if he was going to be strong then he had to pretend to be until he really was. A few baby birds were chirping in a nest in a tree that he passed, one of them fell out of the nest and landed on its head. It died. Zim felt bad for the little bird, he normally never felt sympathy. But then again, he didn't normally feel pain or emptiness so deep in his core. The little animal hadn't even had a chance to prove itself, it was probably the runt, and was done away with by fate before it could become anything at all. It reminded him of his home planet, the runts never lived past a few days, killed shortly after being ruled defective. Zim asked himself how he'd survived it. Why had HE been spared? Only the Tallest could legally give out execution pardons, and those never went to defects. 

Dib drew random scribbles on his math page, most were those cryptic numbers. "3287"s scattered his page, along with his usual drawings of plans he had for Tak's ship or just random cartoons. his handwriting was sloppy, so some of his math problems mixed with his doodles and plans, which made the calculus just more confusing. Dib eventually planted his forehead on his desk and tried to relax, he was also extremely exhausted from the night before and fell asleep. only to be woken up by the sound of a door slamming shut. Dib raised his head from the desk quickly, his paper stuck to his forehead momentarily before it fell back to its place. he glanced around the room to find the cause of the sound and saw Zim walking quietly to his seat, keeping his wigged head down. Dib sighed and glared, this idiot had kept him up all night, making him worry about whatever "3287" meant for Earth. Zim glanced over before going back to his worksheet, unfazed by the human's hostility, he had enough on his plate already. 

Later at lunch Dib decided to follow Zim for a bit, he even sat with him, but Zim just ignored him. He wasn't in the mood to fight Dib, he wasn't even in the mood to be at skool, but if he had stayed home then Dib would get suspicious and just bother him more. Dib looked at him, examining. Zim was just staring down at his plate, poking the garbage on it occasionally with his fork.

"what's wrong with you?" he asked, perplexed. Nothing seemed to have physically harmed Zim, who winced at the bluntness of the question.

"Nothing is wrong with me." he snapped back, "The mighty Zim is amazing." he finished softly like the words didn't sound right to him. he glared back at Dib, like what he said had cut deep.

"Don't lie to me, I mean, I might be your enemy. But I haven't done anything to you yet and you already look like you wanna give up." Dib pointed out, "And that wouldn't make a fair fight." Zim sighed and tried to ignore the human. But Dib never stopped asking questions.

"Zim, seriously, what's wrong? What happened? Yesterday you didn't even want to fight, you just left your base unguarded and I walked right through the front door. and what's this '3287' thing all about?"

"It means nothing to you!" Zim shouted, "You disgusting, spying, insolent pile of garbage!"

Dib grinned, maybe it was really a plan and everything was back to normal.

"Whatever it is, I'm going to stop you from doing it." Dib leaned closer, "I will always stop your plans, Zim."

"I know you will," Zim replied, not seeming confident at all. Dib sat back again.

"Ok, for christ's sake, just tell me what the hell happened to you to get you so bent out of shape? what happened to your confidence? Why aren't you attacking?"

"What does that even mean? You can't?"

"It means that I have come to the conclusion that Zim can't fight you. It means... It means I give up." Zim wondered if the baby bird had given up, or if it was just the smallest and there wasn't enough room in the nest.

"Seriously? Uh, wow. Ok. Cool, so you won't destroy Earth?" 

Zim just glared in response, so Dib grabbed his things and went back to his usual spot with Gaz.

Zim just watched.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope y'all liked this!  
> I'll probably edit and review and rewrite this as I go.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
